Master Your Marriage

Do you get defensive the second your spouse says they're upset with you? Most of us do. We start correcting the facts, or we go straight to "poor me," and five minutes later nobody's talking about the original problem anymore. We're Robert and Sharla, married for over three decades and coaching couples through the same struggles we've lived ourselves. In this episode we talk about what Terry Real calls relational maturity, and his surprisingly simple test for it: “what do you do when your spouse is unhappy with you?” We tell on ourselves with the story of a porch swing Robert built, a creak that scared Sharla, and a lecture on snow loads that cost us the swing. Then we walk through four moves you can make the next time a complaint comes your way, and why owning more than you're asked to own is what calms your spouse down. In this episode Why the first five seconds after "that bothered me" tell you so much The adaptive child, the wise adult, and where we each learned to handle complaints Pia Mellody's three ways we dodge responsibility (Sharla admits to using all of them in one sentence) Why defensiveness is really a way of keeping shame out The porch swing story, and the snow loads lecture Why a complaint is a one-way street, and Terry Real's customer service window The four moves: listen and reflect, acknowledge, own the pattern, give and let go Why saying "it's not the first time I've done this" can calm a fight down A place to start this week The next time your spouse is unhappy with you, ask yourself which part of you is about to answer. Then try one move: "Here's what I heard. Did I get that right?" Want help bringing this into your own marriage? Book a free 30-minute discovery call at https://masteryourmarriage.us Related episodes Ep 169: Defensiveness Is a Self-Esteem Problem, and How to Fix It https://sharla-and-robert-snow.captivate.fm/episode/defensiveness-is-a-self-esteem-problem-and-how-to-fix-it Ep 98: Repair, Part 4 (we process a regrettable incident live) https://sharla-and-robert-snow.captivate.fm/episode/real-repair-what-happens-after-a-big-fight Ep 162: When Is It Okay Not to Forgive? https://sharla-and-robert-snow.captivate.fm/episode/when-is-it-okay-not-to-forgive-and-when-its-not Resources mentioned Terry Real and Relational Life Therapy Terry Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship Pia Mellody, Facing Codependence The Gottman Institute (processing a regrettable incident): https://www.gottman.com Find us https://masteryourmarriage.us Instagram @masteryourmarriage [email protected]

How Lifelong Lovers Cherish Each Other Differently - It is easy to look at someone else’s business, family, house, or marriage and decide ours is not enough. The longer we stay in that comparison, the blinder we get to the good that is already ours. In this episode we talk about cherishing as the practice that brings us back. We look at what cherishing actually means, why it is harder to name seven things we value than seven things we want changed, and the habits that work against us: entitlement, comparison, and the hedonic treadmill. We also walk through the Gottman fondness and admiration questions, and we talk about why cherishing asks for vulnerability, humility, and a different relationship to the differences that once drew us together. Cherishing will not fix contempt or a destructive pattern. It can help a long-term relationship feel like a place that gives life, instead of a life we are only managing. In this episode Why comparison takes our attention away from our own life What it actually takes to have a cherishing relationship, and why capable is not the same as willing Why most of us can list grievances faster than we can list what we cherish Entitlement as a survival habit that costs us in marriage The hedonic treadmill, and what it does not mean A story about what becomes visible only after a loss The Gottman fondness and admiration self-check, and how to read the score Vulnerability, resentment, and humility Why you do not have to wait for your spouse to go first A place to start this week Name one specific good thing before the day gets away from you, and say it out loud. Find us masteryourmarriage.us Instagram @masteryourmarriage [email protected]

How Lifelong Lovers Keep Wanting Each Other Last week we kept talking about the work of stopping damage. That work matters. If contempt, unbridled expression, or defensiveness are running the house, you do not need a new date-night idea first. You need to stop the bleeding. This episode is about what comes after that. Couples can get better at conflict. They can learn to repair. They can stop doing so much damage. And they can still look at each other and feel quiet. Not hateful. Just flat. “We finally learned how to fight better. Why doesn’t it feel more alive?” John Gottman has been saying a version of this for decades. Even the best therapy in the world will never work if it only focuses on conflict. Stopping the damage is the first step. It is not the same thing as building a friendship or a cherishing marriage. Once the negativity has a little less room, there is a space where it used to live. You have to decide what you want to fill that space with. Friendship. Fondness. Play. Shared meaning. Touch. Adventure. One of the things that can fill it is novelty. Not novelty as a gimmick. Novelty as a way of keeping the wanting system awake in a long-term committed relationship. In this conversation we talk about: Why the first year or two can feel electric, and why that intensity often cools around year two, moving in, or kids Helen Fisher’s three systems: lust, attraction (dopamine), and attachment Why early love can feel almost obsessive, and why the brain cannot stay in that state forever Habituation: the brain spends less dopamine on what it already knows well What that does not mean (you did not necessarily marry the wrong person, and passion is not required to die) Arthur Aron’s research on self-expansion and doing new things together Why a familiar person in an unfamiliar place can wake wanting back up Three practices: shared novelty, intentional space that includes a return, and keep becoming / stay curious The honest catch: novelty takes energy, and exhausted couples often misread the quiet as “we grew apart” This week’s experiment Sit down together, even for ten minutes. Where has our life become so efficient that we stopped being interesting to each other? What is one unfamiliar thing we could do together before this season turns? Write it down. Put it on the calendar. Do not turn it into another exhausting project. Go be slightly bad at something new, together. Love, the cherishing kind, is not the absence of familiarity. It is familiarity that still surprises you, again and again. Mentioned Helen Fisher, research on romantic love and the brain Donatella Marazziti, research on serotonin patterns in early love Arthur Aron, Stony Brook University, self-expansion and shared novel activities John Gottman, friendship and conflict James Clear, Atomic Habits (the stonecutter) Connect With Us: Website: MasterYourMarriage.us Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/masteryourmarriage Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MasterYourMarriage/ If you try this and something shifts, even a little, we would love to hear about it. Send a note through masteryourmarriage.us. If you and your partner want help putting practices like this into your actual life, you can book a free 30-minute discovery call at masteryourmarriage.us.

Get the workbook that accompanies this series Last week we talked about borrowing a self. How many of us build a pseudo-self out of attention and approval — reassurance from a partner, praise from a boss, a degree, a title. Those boosters attach our worth to things we do not control. When the attention is stripped away, we don’t really know who we are. That is a recipe for more anxiety and more reactivity. A solid self is built on beliefs, values, and principles you have defined for yourself. Not the ones you inherited and never questioned. That is this episode. Principles. The handful of things you would still conduct yourself by if nobody clapped, if your partner didn’t agree, and if the tension in the room got really thick. That’s when we find out who we are and what we will stand for. In this conversation we talk about: The pile of “shoulds” we bring into marriage, and how the pseudo-self absorbs them to keep the peace Why true belief is not rebelling and not conforming — it is your own reasoning The difference between a value and a principle Why feelings are information, but they don’t get to drive How a family code becomes “personality,” and then collides with someone else’s code What an I-position sounds like — sentences about your functioning, not a diagnosis of them Why the system may spike in anxiety when you stop borrowing, and why that is not proof you chose wrong A value can live in your head. A principle has to show up in how you treat the person across from you. You do not have a principle until you can argue for it — to yourself. If you cannot hold it unless someone is nodding, it is still a booster. Fulfillment and comfort are not the same thing. Living a borrowed life can look successful and still feel empty. Living a principled life can feel tense at first. It is a life you respect. This week’s assignment One value. Your own thinking. Pick one value that really matters in this marriage. Write two or three principles under it. Sentences that start with I. Argue for them. Why this? What does it protect? What does it cost? When would you still keep it? Do the borrowed test. Whose voice is this? Live one sentence for seven days. Stay in contact. When anxiety comes, stop, breathe, ask what the real story is. If you want the longer version, we made a downloadable workbook that walks the three-episode stack and gives you space to write your relationship principles. $5 on our Stan Store. Don’t wait on it to start. This episode is enough to begin. When an anxious person starts to think for herself or himself, the entire relationship system becomes a lot less reactive. Mentioned Kathleen Smith, Everything Isn’t Terrible: Conquer Your Insecurities, Interrupt Your Anxiety, and Finally Calm Down Murray Bowen, family systems theory Workbook [LINK]: https://stan.store/masteryourmarriage/p/when-disagreement-feels-like-a-threat Connect With Us: Website: MasterYourMarriage.us Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/masteryourmarriage Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MasterYourMarriage/ If you try this and something shifts, even a little, we’d love to hear about it. Reply to this episode or send a note through masteryourmarriage.us. If you and your partner want help practicing conversations like this, you can book a free 30-minute discovery call at masteryourmarriage.us.

Last week we talked about anxiety as a response to a real or imagined threat. How we make our partner the threat. How reactivity is the anxiety. This week is the question underneath that: why does their disagreement knock the floor out from under you? A lot of us don’t actually know who we are unless someone is reflecting it back. Praise. A title. Being busy. A spouse who validates us. A room that doesn’t push back. Those things feel like a self. They’re boosters. They work for a minute. Then they wear off, and we need the next one. That’s borrowing a self. And a borrowed self experiences “I don’t see it that way” as a threat. So of course we manage their mood. Of course we please, campaign, or reach for distance. We’re trying to get the floor back. In this episode we talk about: Why you can look so capable at work and come undone at home How boosters and borrowed selves make difference feel dangerous What differentiation actually means in a marriage Why cutting people out soothes anxiety, until you run out of people Small ways to start using your own mind again You can see a hard thing differently than your partner sees it and still stay in the room. Not because you agree. Because you each have enough self to let the other person have a self too. This week’s practice Notice: When do I use my achievements to prop up my sense of self, or even just my mood? When have I focused more on getting love or praise than on developing my own beliefs, principles, or interests? How might I take a little more responsibility for my sense of self this week? And in the moment: stop. Breathe. Ask how the best version of you would want to respond. Try your own thinking before you ask someone to tell you, fix it, or approve it. Mentioned Kathleen Smith, Everything Isn’t Terrible: Conquer Your Insecurities, Interrupt Your Anxiety, and Finally Calm Down Connect With Us: Website: MasterYourMarriage.us Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/masteryourmarriage Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MasterYourMarriage/ If you try this and something shifts, even a little, we’d love to hear about it. Reply to this episode or send a note through masteryourmarriage.us. If you and your partner want help practicing conversations like this, you can book a free 30-minute discovery call at masteryourmarriage.us.